


Alchemy

by Scedasticity



Series: Alchemy [1]
Category: Shadow Unit
Genre: Attempted Rape, Gen, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scedasticity/pseuds/Scedasticity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is chemistry.  And chemistry is everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alchemy

_{first}_

\--Nuclei\--

_Hillview High School Yearbook, 2008-2009_  
Class of 2009 Quotes  
ALBERTA ALDRICH: "Everything is chemistry. And chemistry is everything."

 

_{middle}_

\--Vapor Trail\--

_[September 2009]_

dude if you have to take 101 don't take it from Georges -- any other prof is better. I hear he sprays his students with acid.

 

_[June 2009]_

Last week my sixteen-year-old daughter Kayla and her best friend Madison went to a party at the house of another girl whose parents were out of town. A few hours later Kayla called me crying so hard I could hardly understand her. Then someone else took the phone and said she was a nurse at Mercy Hospital, and Kayla would be fine but I should come and get her!

I don't need to say we drove to the hospital pretty quick! We saw the parents of lots of Kayla's friends there too, and the police. The nurses checked Kayla's name against a list and took us back to a room. She said they were doing a poison screening just in case but that we were lucky and our daughter was a smart girl.

We were very confused but overjoyed just to see our little girl all right. She hugged us and cried. Then I saw there was blood on her hands and clothes. I turned to the nurse in the panic, but the nurse said, "It's all right, it's not hers." But that made Kayla cry harder.

Finally a policeman came and told us what had happened. Some teenage gang members had crashed the party and put sulfuric acid in the drinks. Some of the kids saw them do it but thought they were "just" adding drugs. Kayla had promised me she wouldn't touch alcohol at parties, but Madison drank some right in front of her. It burned through her cheeks and throat and she bled to death while Kayla tried to save her. Five more kids died too.

It could be your child!! Make sure they know the danger!!!!! Forward this to everyone you know!!!!!!!

 

_[February 2009]_

Read this if you have teenage children or know anyone who does!!!

Police have warned of a new gang "initiation game" where several gang members drive out of the city and look for a house where there is a party with teenagers where they can blend in. Then they sneak in, and if there is a keg or a punchbowl they spike it with SULFURIC ACID!!!!!

A dozen children have died this way in horrible pain. Dozens more have been injured for life, one girl will always need a feeding tube because her throat burned up.

Police say the best thing to do is to limit high school parties to ten kids or less, and the parents should know all the guests by sight and make sure no one else gets in. This is not a joke. Pass it on to everyone you know. It could save someone's life.

 

_[December 2008]_

So how's this for freaky? It's been a month since we had two students permanently disfigured with acid burns at a party, and the police STILL DON'T KNOW WHERE THE ACID CAME FROM. They were back at the chemistry department yesterday. Gwen Saunders says this time they wanted to know if the school keeps anything to MAKE nitric acid. She also says they apparently took Bob Eggy -- who's been here since approximately forever -- at face value when he said, "Yes, of course, every high school science department keeps some concentrated sulfuric acid lying around the teacher's lounge. We keep it in spray bottles to use on the students if they get rowdy." Gwen had to do some fast talking to explain the concept of a joke.

Most of the students are still pretty shaken up, even the ones who didn't -- don't, I keep making that mistake -- know the boys. Of course, if there's a silver lining to all this, it's that some of them seem to have been shaken into rethinking the party-booze-drugs extracurriculars...

 

\--Passivation\--

If caller ID had said anything other than _Alby's Cell_ , Chloe would have let it go to voicemail. It was 12:14 Saturday night -- Sunday morning -- and she was finally, finally done grading the stupid lousy exams, and she could get in a good solid block of sleep before starting her own class readings in the morning (and god knew she needed it, with this book). And she hated phones. Sometimes it was all she could do not to throw the damn thing across the room.

But it did say _Alby's Cell_ , and the last time Cousin Alberta had called someone at godawful o'clock, it had been because the friend she'd gone to the party with was drunk out of her mind and Alby had no way to get home. Alby made a lot of decisions Chloe found questionable at best, but she had to admit 'do not ride with drunk person' was better than a lot of seventeen-year-olds managed. Why she'd call Chloe instead of her own siblings was another mystery, but whatever -- any sparks of responsibility were to be encouraged not questioned.

And Alby had sounded -- strange -- on the phone.

So, at 12:42 Sunday morning, she was driving through an unfamiliar part of suburbia double-checking street signs. It was easy to see where the party was -- lights, cars, music loud enough that the neighbors would probably be calling in a noise complaint before morning -- but that wasn't the intersection Alby had given her.

She didn't have a good feeling about this.

The northwest corner of the intersection was diagonally across from the streetlight. If not for the headlights and her left turn, Chloe never would have seen the figure crouched half-under a spruce tree. She pulled up to the curb, but didn't unlock the doors until the lurking person resolved into Alby, coatless, hatless, visibly shivering, and carrying what appeared to be a two-liter bottle of root beer. The bad feeling failed to improve (despite the root beer).

Chloe didn't say anything until Alby was in the car. Then she locked the doors, put the car in park, and let the engine die. Then she reached across and flipped open the glove compartment, hoping the light was still working. It was.

Alby's hair was going in all directions. Her eyes were hollow, and her hands were shaking. (And she was clutching not only a mostly-empty root beer bottle, but a completely empty potato chip bag, and not a snack size. What the hell?) She had a nasty-looking split lip. There was -- yes, that was definitely a hickey on her neck. She wasn't wearing any shoes, _in November_ , and her pantyhose was torn. There was a scattering of little red marks, almost like burns, on her face and hands.

Chloe closed the glove box and searched for something to say. "So I take it you called me instead of Fred or Lexy to prevent headlines of 'Gruesome killing spree at high school party'."

Alby pulled her knees up to her chest. "Do you have any food in here?"

"What?"

"I smell peanut butter. And I'm starving."

Personally, Chloe couldn't smell anything but the 'pine'-scented air freshener she'd applied generously in the aftermath of the Rotten Forgotten Potato Debacle, but Alby had always had a funny nose. And a hollow leg. Of course, in this case-- "Yeah, you look like you haven't eaten all week. Box of cookies on the floor of the back seat. That's my emergency paper-writing stash, so appreciate it--"

Alby had already grabbed the box, _ripped_ it open, and stuffed an entire cookie into her mouth. She almost choked, but washed it down with a swig straight from the root beer bottle. "Nk oo."

"I can replace them. There's a blanket back there, too. I can't keep sitting here much longer, Alby, do you need to go to the hospital?"

"I'm fine." Was that her third cookie? And had she eaten all those potato chips, too?

"You don't look fine."

Alby giggled, sort of, through a mouthful of cookie. "You should--" Her voice cracked. "You should s-see the other guy."

That didn't actually make her feel any better. She reached for the ignition. "I'm taking you to the hospital."

"No!"

That had been unexpectedly vehement. Chloe turned, wishing her eyes would adjust enough to get a good look at Alby's face. "And why not?"

"Like I said, you should see-- He put something in my drink."

Chloe clenched her teeth and closed her eyes for a moment. Yeah, about this time Fred would have been swearing a blue streak. Lexy would be storming the party with a tire iron or possibly driving the car in through the living-room window. "Alby."

"Of course I knew it was there. Like I knew when Fred put salt in the sugar bowl, you know, or when that guy last summer was selling fake, toxic X. I could tell there was too much-- Well, you know. It wasn't easy like the salt, but I got it, before anyone took any."

Actually Chloe hadn't heard about that last incident, but then she'd never really wanted to know about Alby's drug... habits? Experimentation? Usage, that was safe. Unlike the drugs. No matter how good Alby thought she was at spotting irregularities.

"So I knew it was there, and I, uh, I dumped it on him." Alby paused to inhale the last cookie and finish off the root beer. "You have anything else to eat in here?"

There was food in the winter emergency box, but it was in the whatever-you-called-a-trunk-in-a-hatchback and under a twenty-pound textbook. "Let your stomach settle, or you're going to throw it all back up."

"No I won't." Alby twisted in the seat, and for a minute Chloe thought she'd smelled the box and was going after it, but she was just grabbing the beat-up blanket from the back seat. "It made him mad, but I blew him off. Shouldn't've done that. He went and got J-- His friend. He got his friend, and they, um, they grabbed me, and it turns out there's this cruddy guest room in the basement--"

Forget Lexy, _Chloe_ was seriously considering driving the car in through the living-room window.

"That's how my clothes got torn, and I lost my shoes -- damn it, someone should have _noticed_! I yelled! The music wasn't _that_ loud!"

Yes, but the partiers _were_ that drunk. She forced herself not to interrupt.

"We got down, and he started -- he tried -- but then his stupid friend said they should make me take the roofies so I wouldn't remember. Idiot. It doesn't work that way. But he still had a beer, and his friend had plenty of drugs, so they doped the beer and said they'd k-kill me if I didn't drink it..." Alby's voice was shaking terribly. "And I looked at it and I could -- I could see it, and I... I... I changed it."

"What?"

"It changed. Everything it needed was there, just... not arranged right. It re-arranged. It was C-sixteen H-twelve F N-three O-three -- and beer -- and then it was H N O-three."

Chemistry was the only academic subject Alby had any interest in. It wasn't Chloe's forte. That last one sounded familiar, though... "Isn't that acid?" Where had she heard that -- oh, right. Flamethrowers on other planets.

"Yeah. Nitric acid. And there was also some graphite and hydrogen and fluorocarbons -- thank god stable ones -- and the beer was still beer, so it wasn't all that concentrated, but all the hydrogen fizzed out so it was like when you shake a pop can -- I didn't know, I didn't realize it would do that -- and that's what happened to my face and hands."

"I think I missed something..."

If Alby heard her, she didn't respond. "And he was still grabbing at me, so I _threw it on him_. I threw acid on him. He couldn't even scream--"

"I'm still not following where you got the acid--"

"And then his friend got _really_ angry. And he -- I could _see_ he had more flunitrazepam in a bottle in his pocket, I could see it, not with my eyes, and why would he have it if he wasn't planning on using it on _someone_? And it was all wrong, so I made that change, too. Only it still had graphite and fluorocarbons and hydrogen, but not the water from the beer. It was concentrated. And the hydrogen getting out burst the bottle. In his pocket." Alby started rocking back and forth slightly, huddled in the blanket. "Nitric acid. In his pocket. He screamed. He was hurt _bad_."

Chloe managed -- barely -- not to say 'good!' She also didn't say, 'How the hell do you think you made it change?'

"And I just... ran away. I was so hungry, so I stopped in the kitchen, and then I called you, and I just left them there. Major acid burns need to be _treated_. And I did that to them and I went to get _food_ and I left them there, and they're hurt worse than they hurt me, so we can't go to the hospital and you can't call the police!"

She was beginning to suspect that acid of some sort had made an appearance earlier in the evening. She'd leave dealing with that to someone else. "Alby, you could get in trouble for throwing acid on a guy -- but it was self-defense--"

"You don't know--"

"And beyond that, _no one_ 's going to accuse you of making the date rape drug in some guy's pocket turn into nitric acid and explode."

"But I did," Alby whispered. "I did."

Had she ever even managed to convince a _sober_ Alby of anything? "It doesn't matter whether you did. No one's going to accuse you of it."

"I could do it again. I could do worse. If the fluorine had gone on the hydrogen--"

Chloe ignored that. "So we are going to the emergency room, and I am calling the police and telling them that party features drug use and underage drinking. I think you should file a police report, but I won't make you unless the ER says you're hurt."

"Except the acid. I did that." Alby hunched over further. "They'll do a blood test. I was drinking, and before that -- no, there's not much there now, is there--"

"Alby. Look at me." Chloe waited until the pale face turned towards her. "It'll be okay. We will make this okay."

"That's why I called you and not Fred," Alby muttered. "Even when you panic you're quiet about it."

She didn't know whether that was a compliment, and the car was getting very cold. "Okay. Hospital?"

"All right," Alby said in a small voice. "Only -- Chloe?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we stop at a drive-through or something on the way? I'm really hungry."

 

\--Acid Dissociation Constant\--

_Everything is chemistry. Especially for you, and you can never forget it._

_You taste and smell in information -- like looking at text and not a picture, you tried to explain it once You can't get pleasure from sensing chemicals like other people do. You need something that skips the senses and goes straight to the brain. Luckily that's not hard to find, especially at a party._

_Of course you smell -- sense -- some things so much that you don't really notice them anymore. H2O. O2. N2. CO2. C6H12O6 -- you only notice it when you don't have enough of it. (Or when someone else doesn't, but that's not so common.)_

_'Reading' CO is actually useful._

_Polymers are like poetry. You like them better than the poetry in English class, but they're almost as hard to interpret._

_You really notice the highly reactive stuff, and rare stuff. And normally it doesn't jump out so much when you've been dropping acid (ingesting C20H25N30). So you're surprised when your drink seems off, and take a closer not-look._

_C2H6O. You like C2H6O. Water, various saccharides, blah, blah, blah-- Wait. C16H12FN3O3. That's not supposed to be there. It takes a minute to remember what it means -- where you've seen it before -- flunitrazepam, Rohypnol -- and when you do, you throw your drink on the guy who gave it to you. You don't even think maybe you should leave the party._

_When he comes after you in the hall, you don't see it coming. Interpreting chemicals off people is like trying to read Chinese. In the dark._

_There's traces of CH4 in the basement. C2H6. There must be a gas furnace. NaClO. Laundry room. Iron, stuck to proteins, loose in your mouth. You try to spit out the blood. C10H15N. Figures he'd be on the hard stuff._

_You've never been so scared._

_And then he's shoving C16H12FN3O3 at you. You take the cup and think of throwing it on him again, but that wouldn't really help. A little beer in the eyes would just make him mad._

_Ironic thing is there are so many things that could hurt him if they were just arranged a little differently. Hell, he just put a weapon in your hand, if it were only arranged a little differently, you know that._

_It's right there. You can almost see it -- two six-rings of C, with another sort of half right with two N, another C on one, H stuck on wherever a C has room, one lone F... It's right there._

_Right. There._

_Flip that over, break that, stick that on there. Attach one of those. More left over than used, but who cares, dump it--_

_Beer doesn't hold H2 in solution. You see it explode out of the cup like CO2 from a shaken soft drink, and like the soft drink, it brings beer with it, to sprinkle droplets on your face and hand-- Only beer doesn't burn._

_You look at (smell) (read) the cup. H2O, C2H6O, various saccharides -- it's still beer, but instead of the roofies there's the escaping H2 -- and C -- and just a little C10F18 -- and HNO3. HNO3._

_You feel light-headed. He's still right there in front of you, like he didn't even notice the escaping hydrogen._

_The cup is right there, too. You should do something before the plastic (polymer) is eaten or something, though it hasn't happened yet (polymers are hard to read, even when you can suddenly see it, chains and chains of C8H8 stretching out like a musical note)._

_"Come on, drink it!" he says._

_"You drink it," you say, and for the second time in the evening, throw beer in his face._

 

\--Supersaturation\--

When their baby sister Alberta was born, Lexy was seven and Freddy was five, and Lexy may or may not have noticed that air fresheners made the baby cry. (She later claimed she did, but no one else remembered anything about it.)

When Freddy was six and a half, he told his parents there was something really wrong with Bertie, because she willingly and happily ate creamed spinach.

While Lexy was nine, she caught Bertie toddling purposefully into the housekeeping closet no fewer than eight times before the grown-ups caught on that Bertie saw household cleaning products as bright shiny toys.

When Freddy was nine, he charged seven of his friends a dollar each to come see Bertie identify things by smell, with another dollar per successful identification. He got thirty-one dollars before Bertie got upset over a bottle of hydrogen peroxide which she could not identify more specifically than "water and a bit". When the friend insisted she was wrong, upset turned into a screaming tantrum, and Lexy caught them. She made him give the money back.

When Lexy was twelve, she had Physical Science at junior high, and her textbook had a Periodic Table of Elements in it. Their parents just cared that she did well in the class, and Freddy had no interest whatsoever. But whenever Lexy worked on something with the Periodic Table, Bertie came and lurked and listened and stared until Lexy gave in and read whatever it was aloud. (Bertie refused to even try to read it herself.) By the end of the year, Bertie knew the elements better than the alphabet. She carefully pronounced "di-hy-dro-gen mon-ox-ide" for the whole summer.

When Freddy was eleven, he tried again to tell his parents something was wrong with Bertie, because she said lima beans "felt interesting" and marshmallows were "too sticky". It was true that Bertie didn't seem to care how things tasted, or smelled, but -- as Lexy pointed out after he got brushed off -- she could identify dry cereal from across the room with her eyes closed. No one would believe she had a sensory deficiency, no matter how many dead skunks didn't bother her.

When Lexy was fourteen, their parents separated. Officially their father took a higher-paying job, but it was in Japan. It had been coming for at least a year. Lexy had tried to stave it off by making things at home as easy as possible, but her siblings hadn't cooperated. She blamed them for months. Meanwhile, their mother hired the first of a succession of nannies.

When Fred was thirteen, Lexy went away on a debate tournament while their mother was on a business trip. Bertie woke Fred up in the middle of the night, insisting that the house was on fire. Fred duly got up and nearly fell down the stairs due to not being all the way awake. As it turned out, the house was not on fire, but the fourth in a succession of nannies was smoking on the porch. The _nanny_ got fired, and Fred called Bertie "The Human Smoke Detector" for the next three months.

When Lexy was sixteen, Bertie wrote a school essay entitled "Why My Taste Is Not A Matter Of Taste," in which she seemed to be saying that for her, tasting and smelling were like looking at newsprint, not art. It wasn't very well-written, well-spelled, or well-punctuated. Bertie got a B- and a referral to the school counselor, who said she was depressed over her parents' separation. Fred said "I told you so" until their mother accused him of giving Bertie the idea. Then he said it to Lexy until she threatened to let the rest of the family know he'd joined the high school gymnastics team, not the basketball one (though she was forced to admit that Fred _had_ called it). The counseling never went anywhere.

When Fred was sixteen, Lexy graduated high school with honors, as expected by, well, everyone, everywhere. Their father even made the ceremony. What felt like several hours into the graduation party, Fred snuck off behind the bushes to try a joint. He almost got caught by Cousin Chloe chasing a badly thrown Frisbee. He did get caught by Bertie. He tried to stammer out a combination explanation-rationale-not-to-tell-Mom-(or-Lexy). Bertie listened without comment, then said, "That has carbon monoxide in it. But the other stuff... it's _cool_." Fred was weirded out, and decided to never ever bring recreational drugs home ever again. He was afraid they'd disappear.

When Lexy was nineteen and away at college, don't-call-me-Bertie's junior high guidance counselor sent a note home suggesting that she should be evaluated for bulimia. The note somehow never made it. The counselor called, left messages, got no response, and eventually reached Fred. He tried to assure her that don't-call-me-Bertie had always eaten like a pig and stayed skinny as a rail, but she remembered him and not with confidence, so he gave her Lexy's number. Lexy was stuck on the phone with her for almost an hour and a half when she was supposed to be doing calculus homework, but fortunately she _was_ remembered positively, and she managed to convince the school that don't-call-me-Bertie wasn't bulimic, just weird. The counselor then said that not being bulimic didn't mean she wasn't _troubled_. Lexy said she didn't mind helping her sister, but she wasn't going to try to parent her.

When Fred was eighteen, he and their mother had a horrific fight involving GPAs, college applications, basketball, gymnastics, grocery bills, truthfulness, and his sexual orientation. Fred stormed out to go stay with a friend for the night. Their mother stormed off to go back to the office all night. The twenty-seventh in a series of nannies had already gone home for the night. Alby snuck out to go to a party, and got away with it. She almost got away with it the second time, too, but in the morning Fred noticed she was hung over. She assured him that in the future she would be more careful evaluating her ethanol intake. He was still too mad at their mother to tattle.

When Lexy was twenty, she just barely made it to Fred's high school graduation (but beat their father there). Fred was in the middle of his class, planning to attend the public university in town, and had managed to still not confirm his sexual orientation either way. Lexy asked him privately why he wasn't going somewhere out of town. He admitted Alby had begged him not to leave home at all, and going to the dorms in town was a compromise. And he was keeping his car, so he could get home easily. Alby herself spent most of the (small) graduation party looking for the source of a presumed methane leak she'd detected. She eventually found a plastic tub of cow manure in the trunk of Fred's car, and told Lexy after Fred refused to let her come along on his 'visit' to the school football field.

When Fred was nineteen, the thirty-first in a series of nannies -- who by this time were just adults to stay in the house so their mother could leave Alby there when she went out of town -- called him very, very late on a Friday night to say Alby hadn't come home and wasn't answering her cell, and their mother was out of town and not answering her cell either. The nanny didn't normally bother to enforce curfew -- or anything else -- but it was two in the morning and she was actually getting worried. Fred called Alby himself, and sure enough, his name on the caller ID actually got the phone answered. It didn't get her to say where she was, but judging from the noise in the background, it probably involved a fake ID. Judging from Alby's quality of speech, it also involved drugs. He refused to hang up until Alby swore not to get in a car with anyone under the influence.

When Lexy was twenty-two, she started law school at the public university in town. She also moved back home -- at first just for a little while, because their mother really did have a lot of important meetings out of town and the last of a series of nannies had just been fired, or quit, depending on who you asked. (Their mother had found marijuana in the house, and blamed the nanny even after Alby admitted responsibility.) But it turned out Lexy could actually motivate Alby to (a) keep illegal activities out of the house, (b) return to the house at least once every twenty-four hours except by prior arrangement, and (c) put enough effort into school to pass in all the classes. (She already got A's in chemistry-related classes. As one of her teachers said, "Alberta definitely knows what she's interested in".) Fred said it was probably holdover from Lexy's tyrannical childhood. Lexy pointed out that being aware of financial leverage helped. Alby's hefty allowance was mostly disappearing _somewhere_ \-- when pressed she claimed it was because of quality, not quantity -- so she often needed petty cash.

When Fred was twenty-one, Alby did _not_ get caught in a drug sweep at the high school. "Most people," she said, the next time he came home for dinner, "don't understand how sensitive those dogs are. They weren't careful enough." When he asked if that meant she did understand the dogs, she smiled smugly. "Sure. I'm better." He called her Human Smoke Detector and let it drop.

When Alberta was seventeen, Lexy came downstairs on a Sunday morning and found Alby in the kitchen, amidst a bizarre mess of food and cleaning products, eating dry macaroni noodles out of the box. And things changed.

 

_{next}_

 

\--Reaction Intermediate\--

For the rest of the school year, the high school has periodic problems with untraceable odors, overnight rust destruction of various doors, athletic equipment, and lockers, a batch of mildly hallucinogenic tater tots, and several exploding bananas. The police are called for the explosions (the tater tots are tentatively dismissed as mass hysteria), but it never really goes anywhere because it's _bananas_ and the explosions aren't terribly impressive.

Turns out bananas don't have all that much potassium after all.

She doesn't have a graduation party as such, but that's okay because she's stopped speaking to most of her former friends (they should have noticed) and most of her relatives she doesn't want to see. Lexy has her pick a restaurant, and they go out with Fred and Chloe. She demolishes the buffet and teases Fred about when they'll get to meet his girlfriend, boyfriend, harem, sheep, or blow-up doll. She's going to go to technical college in the fall, to learn all the things she never knew she didn't know, much less would need to know, about chemistry. Her transcript is abysmal, but Lexy swears they'll manage it.

It's easier to stay off psychoactive substances, or at least the illegal ones, than she thought it would be. If she's very, very careful, she can put together just enough to make her neurotransmitters quit whining. And one beer and a plant full of chlorophyll? Way trippier than LSD and _Fantasia_. Which is good, because all of a sudden she's spending her entire allowance on food.

She decaffeinates her mother's coffee, just to see if she can. And see what happens. She practices until she can make the bits of ex-caffeine settle with the grounds. Also until her mother's PA quits. Coincidentally. It takes getting up two hours early, an entire box of energy bars, and eyestrain-not-in-her-eyes (building things is so much harder than taking them apart), but she _hypercaffeinates_ Lexy's coffee. The results are not pretty, and she never does it again.

Unsalted canned tomato paste has a lot more potassium than bananas. You do have to take it out of the can. It splatters rather than explodes, but it also catches fire, or at least the hydrogen makes it look that way. In the fall she challenges her classmates to figure out how she does it. Sure, it's showing off, but it's fun. Along about October, one of them makes a cell phone video of a demonstration, calls it "Spontaneously Combusting Tomato" (even though it's not a whole tomato and is technically spontaneously _igniting_ , thanks a bunch Chloe), and puts it up on the internet.

And she doesn't think about the fading marks on her face and hands, or try to remember what exactly she said to Chloe That Night or Lexy in the morning, or how much they'd believed. She doesn't think of screaming. She doesn't think about death hiding inside life. She doesn't think about waking up from dreams of amino acids with her stomach wrapped around her backbone. She doesn't think about how tired she gets. She doesn't think about how wrong something must be, that she's eaten still she can't and is still short on glucose. She doesn't think about the half-familiar biomolecules she's noticed in herself, that might be distress calls.

Because she's happy. Because who needs to feel-taste marshmallows or chocolate chip cookies when you can make a mini-marshmallow on your own and see the music in a plastic plate?

So far she hasn't gotten down past molecules -- or up past colloids, for that matter, and she can just make those fall apart. But someday, she thinks, someday maybe she can turn lead into gold.


End file.
